Submitting to multiple categories

Are we allowed? Should we bother?

[ALbino]

My site qualifies for two completely seperate categories. This is a bad example, but let's say my site was about "Mythological Widgets" and I qualified for the two categories "Mythology" and "Widgets in General" which usually have nothing in common except through my site. Should I then submit to both? My site is already in one category, but there is obvious benefit to being in the other as well. If I do submit would I lose my other category listing? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

[skibum]

Assuming it is a commercial site, the general rule is one topical listing and one regional listing if the business site has a physical street address on it.

In all likelyhood, no it won't be listed in 2 topical categories. Your existing listing is unlikely to be removed for submitting to another category but if the editor feels the second cat is a better fit, the existing listing might be moved.

[kctipton]

Submission guidelines suggest you submit to the ONE best category for your site. Are there really two best categories for it? Is the content split 50/50?

[ALbino]

Let's say you had an art site that was dedicated to Paintings and Sculptures. How do you choose between the Paintings category and the Sculptures category?

[choster]

Paintings and sculpture are both under the umbrella of Visual Arts, so you'd submit to Visual Arts.

[ALbino]

That was just an example, my site has nothing to do with art. Assuming there were Paintings and Sculptures categories, what then?

[hutcheson]

For the general case (that is, the one you must assume for all hypothetical cases) the answer you need to hear is in the submittal guidelines. "Submit to THE most appropriate CATEGORY" (with emphasis on the singularity of the number of that last noun, just like choster said.)

If you have a genuinely unique cross-category topic (and they do exist--I saw a book on the "Archaeology of Beekeeping" once--yes, I'd consider listing that under both Agriculture and Archaeology. But I'll bet your case is not so genuinely uniquely bifocal as that.

Unless you give details of the actual site and categories involved, you MUST take the answer as above given--it is the only correct one you will get. And for 99% of all sites, even if you give those details, you'll still get the same answer. (But there is that 1%.)

[flicker]

There are Painting and Sculpture categories (at least there are in the ODP, which seems to be the directory you're asking about?) If you had a site that dealt substantially with both, you'd bump up a level and submit to the parent category (in this case, Visual Art).

If you were selling paintings of Princess Diana, you'd submit your site to the Shopping/Visual_Arts/Painting/ category, not the Princess Diana biography category.

If your site contained a subpage with a series of original articles about the importance of Princess Diana to British society, it's possible the ODP might choose to deeplink that page in the Princess Diana category. The standards for deeplinking are extremely high--if you don't have REALLY original content (i.e. you wrote it yourself) and lots of it (i.e. not a three-sentence profile) you shouldn't bother. And as far as I know we *never* list commercial deeplinks (i.e. a particular product).

Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal view not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.

[Ah... simulpost with Hutcheson, who was much clearer. (-: ]

[rfgdxm1]

The other iffy case is when a site has sections on unrelated content. Consider the following hypothetical. You have a site on the safe use of widgets, widgetsafety.com. However, you are also a big fan of some 1970s bubblegum rock band. You put a huge amount of unique content about this band at widgetsafety.com/bubblegumband. Even if widgetsafety.com is listed in the appropriate widget category, that subdirectory is arguably a completely different site (it has nothing to do with the main site content), and might be listable in the appropriate widget category.

[edited by: rfgdxm1 at 12:07 am (utc) on Nov. 10, 2003]

[ALbino]

Interesting points everyone. I think it sounds like the smartest plan of action then is just to leave it in the category it's in and be glad that I actually ever got listed in DMOZ in the first place. Many thanks.

[rfgdxm1]

>Interesting points everyone. I think it sounds like the smartest plan of action then is just to leave it in the category it's in and be glad that I actually ever got listed in DMOZ in the first place. Many thanks.

Probably the best idea. If you really do have a site like the putative "Archaeology of Beekeeping" one hutcheson mentioned, one possibility is to use editor feedback to the editor where it was not listed suggesting that they might also be interested.